Father's Song
by Willofthewisp
Summary: A late night man-to-man talk between Captain Teague and his adolescent son that means more to them than either one lets on. One-shot


**A/N: Special thanks to the "Popular Songs in American History" website for providing me the lyrics to several great songs from the time period. I discovered recently that if I turn the sound on, I can hear the melodies! Willofthewisp=delayed reaction. However, I do not own the song "Aboard as I was Walking." It's a bit after when I usually like to set my POTC stories, but come on-- there's no set year! I also do not own POTC.**

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Teague rolled his neck against the back of his chair and closed his eyes, breathing in the salty night air. With each little creak of his stretching, he smiled and bent his head back down to his guitar. On one of Shipwreck Cove's many terraces, he took in the lamp light overhead and then the starlight out on the horizon. It reflected off the still waters, he noticed. The soft strains of a song whose name he couldn't remember came to mind, as did the waves of Oria's hair, her satiny hands, that bright piercing fire in her eyes that commanded his attention. He laughed, remembering he seemed to know exactly what she was saying long before he'd ever learned a lick of Italian nor she English and it was all because of those eyes.

No more.

He curled his fingers, preparing to strike a chord, when a shrill cry cut through the stillness.

"Out! Out now!"

Guitar still in hand, Teague sauntered to the railing and leaned over to see his son roll, literally roll, out the door that led down to the beach. One of Mistress Ching's serving girls stomped out and launched her leg right into Jackie's groin. Teague sucked in his cheeks and winced. Then he smirked. Then he grinned.

"Oy!" he called down to him. "Can't any of us get a moment's peace around here?"

Jackie, still clutching his groin, bounced to his feet and met his father's gaze with a roll of his eyes.

"Not sure I deserved that."

"No, ye probably did. Get up here, boy."

Teague fell back into his chair, shaking his head. The boy had promised to spend a year with him at Shipwreck Cove before continuing on some addlebrained idea of becoming a merchant sailor. Only two weeks had gone by and Teague felt ready to drop in exhaustion.

As if on cue, he heard the bouncing of sixteen-year-old steps behind him. Spry, he thought to himself.

"Take a seat," he said without looking at him.

"If you're going to punish me, might I point out I was just savagely beaten down there…by a girl?"

"What happened?"

Jackie shot him a grin. He might have been blessed with Oria's fine bones and skin, but that grin…the boy belonged to him more than he would ever have thought possible.

"Ah," Teague said. "Then ye must not have been very good."

"Not very good? Who am I? That was far from the problem." Jackie rested his head against his chair and glanced out at the sea, his face taking on a pensive, thoughtful frown. He interlocked his fingers. "She told me she loved me."

"Did she now?" Teague paused his casual strumming. "I take it back. Ye must have been very, very good, Jackie-boy."

"Jack, if ye please."

"When I'm good and dead. Ye didn't say the same, I wager?"

"We met just this evening," Jackie whispered, more to himself, his eyes drifting back to the sea. "What'd she expect?"

He sounded so practiced, Teague thought. Well, in the act itself, not the aftermath. His tongue scraped against his teeth to keep from chuckling. Sixteen and how many had he… Shaking his head at the disturbing notion, he examined Jackie's face, still adjusting to it being so near. Restless. Hungry. Oria must have known every expression by heart, even the hidden ones and what did he know? His son liked taking the girls to bed? Bah, that made him no different than the other boys, except that maybe he had more success.

"Here." He leaned over and handed him his guitar. "Play something for me."

"I don't have a knack for it," Jackie said, eyeing him. Suspicious lad. Daft, too.

"If those hands can play a lady they can play a guitar."

Jackie's eyebrows shot up and then narrowed, inspecting the instrument. At least he held it correctly. His long fingers didn't play chords, but individual notes, the song inciting Teague to leap out of his chair like it was on fire.

"How do you know that song, boy?"

"You'd whistle it, on the occasion your whistling was near enough for me to hear."

He ignored what easily could have turned into an argument about Teague's sparse occasions of parenting and instead scooted his chair closer to Jackie's, the boy keeping a steely lock on him.

"Do you know what it is?"

Jackie shook his head.

"The King and his men stole the Queen from her bed/and bound her in her bones/the seas be ours and by the powers/where we will we'll roam," Teague sang in a hushed voice. "That's the call, the call for the brethren court. It cries for the pirate lords to gather. If I was whistlin' it, could have earned me a slit throat if the wrong person heard it, eh? But you'll learn it in time. Never sing it, Jackie, not unless the worst has happened."

"Why'd the King bind his Queen in her bones?"

"Oh, the Pirate King, Jackie, the Pirate King. It's a song about Davy Jones and Calypso. Aye. What a story." He watched Jackie from the corner of his eye, taking in the satisfaction of drawing the boy in. "Legend has it the unfortunate, or fortunate, depending how ye look at it, captain caught sight of the goddess bathing, but instead of pulling an Actaeon and making a stag out of him, she rather enjoyed it and from that day forth, they were lovers. Ye ever been in love, Jackie? Course not. You're too young. But you will. Makes ye mad, it does. They both were of the sea, but their love was fire as hot as if hell had spat it out. Calypso knew the dangers of a distracting man, though, to her credit. She appointed him her ferryman, taking all the dead at sea and carrying them over to the other side. She'd see him every ten years, just for a day, when she could shirk her duties and they could be together. Didn't turn out well for either of them, mark my words. For whatever reason, the fickle goddess was not there to meet him on that one day and it hardened Captain Jones' heart so much, pirates and respectable sailing men alike have feared him."

Jackie plucked out a few more notes, his forehead knitted in concentration. Perhaps it was his way of ingesting it, Teague thought, surprised at the lack of questions such a story usually spurred. Lord knows when he'd asked his own father about it, the whole night had turned into a question-and-answer festival of sorts.

"That's a terrible story," he finally said.

"I agree with ye, boy, not a happy ending in the least."

"I didn't pretend to love her," Jackie said with a violent seriousness.

"Never said ye did."

"No, that you didn't, but I don't need to be compared to some goddess that toys with men and then leaves them cursed," he said. "No wonder they bound her."

"No one was comparing you to nothing, Jackie." Teague rolled his eyes. "Oy, look at me." He waited until those black eyes bored into him. "Now you'll get a lot of grief from me, boy, and you'll see we're not so different, you and I. Ye get more from me than ye think, but I'll tell you this—you're not me. That'll be the last time I say it."

"Right," Jackie said slowly, giving him an inquisitive look. Teague liked that look the best. He was smart, his boy, unusually smart…and he hid it. He kept quiet or he joked and acted like he had paid no attention at all and then would come out and surprise everyone in sailing, charting, languages, histories. Bloody hell, he'd even heard straight up poetry come out of that boy's mouth. All except that guitar.

"I'll take that back now," Teague said. Jackie handed him the guitar and he began the intro to a familiar song. With it back in his hands, a moment of clarity washed over him. "Better be a goddess what gets her hooks into you. I don't think a mortal woman could keep up with ye." That brought a crooked smile to the boy's face. "I know ye know this one, Jackie. Sing it with me."

"Aboard as I was walking/Down by some greenwood side/I heard a young girl sighing, 'I wish I were a bride.'"

'I thank you, pretty fair maid/For singing of your song/It's I myself shall marry you/Kind, sir, I am too young." They both sang in whispers at first, but it soon heightened to the terraces and balconies above them, all the way up to the stars.

"Nine times I kissed her ruby lips/I viewed her sparkling eye/I took her by the lily white hand/My lovely bride to be."


End file.
